


Bucky's Baby

by blueshirts



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Kid!Fic, M/M, not mpreg, steve is confused and a little turned on, the winter soldier has a baby, wait i should clarify
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 18:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1574732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueshirts/pseuds/blueshirts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cautiously, and as carefully as he’d learned to in the 2 hour bomb defusal course he’d attended a few months ago, Steve picked up the baby. It didn’t go off, at least not in the way he’d been expecting. It’s chin started trembling, and he could hear a wail building up in it’s tiny body at the novel sensation of being handled by a stranger in red, white, and blue. Before it could cry out, however, the chilly business end of a gun was levelled at the back of Steve’s head.<br/>“Put the baby down, Rogers.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bucky's Baby

Steve thought he’d been prepared for everything. He’d even made another list, titled Things That Might Go Wrong in our Search for The Winter Soldier. He’d later shortened it to The List at Sam’s bequest, since Steve kept referencing it in combat and the seconds it took to say the title usually happened to be vital to their survival. The List had been instrumental in their run ins with the HYDRA agents also after Bucky, as well as their encounters with numerous traps set by Bucky himself. Once, they’d ended up trapped in a safe at the bottom of the Hudson (long story) but were able to escape thanks to that very scenario being on Steve’s list.

Probably the only thing not on The List was what lay before Steve that very moment, burbling and blowing a sizable snot bubble with gusto.

“Sam,” Steve whispered, trying not to move his lips lest he set the thing off. Steve had never seen a fake baby-bomb before, but he wouldn’t put it past the Winter Soldier.

Steve waited in an uncomfortable silence occasionally disturbed by a giggle from the child looking thing in the crib in front of him. The crib, true to Winter Soldier form, was made of a pure black synthetic fabric that looked like it may have been bullet proof.

Maybe Sam was too far away to hear his whisper.

Steve steeled himself and tried again, louder this time, “Sam! There’s a baby here. I’m going to pick it up. If you hear an explosion, you should add ‘bomb baby’ to the list.”

Cautiously, and as carefully as he’d learned to in the 2 hour bomb defusal course he’d attended a few months ago, Steve picked up the baby. It didn’t go off, at least not in the way he’d been expecting. It’s chin started trembling, and he could hear a wail building up in it’s tiny body at the novel sensation of being handled by a stranger in red, white, and blue. Before it could cry out, however, the chilly business end of a gun was levelled at the back of Steve’s head.

“Put the baby down, Rogers.”

Bucky’s voice, free of the Russian accent that had been present the last time they’d met, still sounded volatile and unsafe. Steve’s battle reflexes kicked into gear, his heart racing and brain going a mile a minute. He weighed his options. He could keep holding the baby, and possibly be shot point-blank or he could put the baby down, and still face the possibility of being shot. He didn’t like his options. Cradling the baby to his chest, Steve turned as slowly and nonthreatening as he could to face his would-be shooter, the cold assassin who wore his oldest and best friend’s face.

“No, I don’t think I will.” He tried, injecting his voice with more confidence than he felt. Bucky’s mouth twitched. The baby started crying, and Bucky looked down at it, then back up at the gun in his hand. He sighed, a quiet exhalation almost lost in the noise. Steve wondered desperately what Sam was doing and, more importantly, why the heck he wasn’t there, protecting Steve from death by bullet like good friends ought to.

Bucky raised his gun and scratched his head with it absent mindedly, the barrel tousling his hair. Steve noted with the small part of his mind not occupied on imminent danger that it was shorter, much shorter, but not puffed up with hair gunk and a big ego like his Bucky’s hair was. The baby cried on, it’s wail only increasing in volume. Hopefully a disgruntled neighbor would get tired of the noise call the cops. The NYPD may not be as competent at Steve or Sam, but they had guns and handcuffs. Bucky sighed as if the very concept of mercy were something nasty that one might find on the bottom of their shoe and be forced to scrape off.

“Okay, you know what? Temporary truce. Give him to me, and I won’t kill you until after he’s been fed. That alright with you?”

Temporary truces? Another thing not on The List. Steve stammered out a “Sure”, and gave the baby to Bucky in exchange for the gun. Once in Bucky’s dangerous hands, the infant quieted down and began to burble happily once again. Steve cocked his head to the side at that interesting turn of events, but Bucky only turned his back on Steve and marched out the door. Steve followed, inexplicably curious.

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll shoot you?” he asked Bucky, simultaneously uncocking the gun and slipping it into his belt.

Bucky snorted, amused, and looked at Steve over his shoulder. He shook his head once, then turned his head back around in time to stop in what looked to be the kitchen. He shifted the baby to his hip and walked forward to open one of the stainless steel cabinets. Once open, It was revealed to be filled with stacks of baby formula, applesauce, cheerios, and an array of lethal knives that Steve guessed weren’t created for use in the kitchen. Bucky’s fingers twirled in the air as he searched for something in the cabinet. Finding it, he removed a cup of applesauce

“You wouldn’t shoot me. ‘Til the end of the line, remember?” He carefully avoided Steve’s eyes, focused with undue intensity on peeling back the foil atop the applesauce. Steve forgot to breathe for a moment, unprepared for Bucky casually using that line (and, if he was to be honest with himself, how right Bucky was). Emotional manipulation was on The List, but Steve had mistakenly thought it would be the forerunner to a fist or gunfight, not to seeing Bucky spoon applesauce into an infant’s mouth.

“Also,” Bucky continued, his tone deceptively light, “Your partner’s tied up in the bathroom. I didn’t even torture him really, just set him down close to the dirty diaper bin. Maybe he’ll think twice about coming after us with that smell fresh in his mind. ”

Steve angled his body towards where he knew the bathroom to be, from his search. He bit his lip, wondering if Bucky was telling him the truth. His gut told him Bucky wasn’t lying to him, but it’d be a mistake to forget to consider what ulterior motives the Winter Soldier might have. This could be a long con, the baby could be (laughably enough) a hired hand, and this could all be a ruse to entrap him with something that lay in wait in the bathroom. Suddenly the baby cried out, cutting into his thoughts.

Seemingly unbidden, the words spilled from Bucky’s mouth “Aw, fu--.”

“--dgesicle.” finished Steve as he levelled Bucky with a look he usually reserved for Tony Stark. Bucky looked sheepish, a strange expression on the hard face of an ex-Soviet assassin. Steve pushed all thought of traps aside and walked over to Bucky and the baby.

“He probably just needs to burp. Here, let me…”

In the blink of an eye, another gun was cocked and pointed at him. Steve put his hands up in surrender and couldn’t help sounding duly impressed when he asked where Bucky had been hiding the gun.

“None of your business,” Bucky growled, “ I’ll burp my own baby, Rogers, and you can either get the fudgesicle out of my kitchen or sit down in that chair over there and keep your hands on the table where I can see ‘em.”

Steve did as he was told and sat down, seeing as how he was looking down the barrel of a gun and how he was fond of his body the way it was-- intact and functioning. Bucky set his gun down on the table and experimentally held the baby against his shoulder, patting it lightly as it cried.

“So when exactly did Captain America become a baby expert?” Bucky asked conversationally, as if he hadn’t just had a gun in Steve’s face. Steve tried to match his nonchalance.

“Oh, I used to help the sisters look after the younger ones in the orphanage. I kept asking you to join me, but you always said you had things-- wait. Did you say it was yours?”

Bucky hummed for the second time that night, this time in affirmation. His baby had stopped crying and he was smiling down at it like he used to look at Steve, a mixture of restrained fondness and exasperation. Steve felt a blunt jab of pain in his stomach, like he’d been punched. He had to tear his eyes away from the sight lest he start blowing snot bubbles or something equally embarrassing for anyone over the age of one to do. He zeroed in on a black and white photograph in a frame on the windowsill, the only impractical object he’d spotted yet in Bucky’s apartment. If he squinted, he could make out two figures, one small and light haired, one darker haired and towering over him, with his arm around the other’s diminutive shoulders and his head thrown all the way back. He was laughing at a joke the smaller one had said. Steve knew, because he’d been the one telling the joke. Why did Bucky have that picture? Steve coughed awkwardly. Both his heart and head were starting to ache.

“Do I even want to know?”

Bucky laughed. It was short and sharp and all too rusty, but it made Steve’s heart jump nonetheless.

“Probably not. There’s not enough romance and too many genetic tests to make a good story. Suffice it to say, Les is mine, and I’m not letting anyone else within ten feet of him”

Steve pondered for a beat, then forged on. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“You let me.”

The baby-- Les-- was falling soundly asleep held tight in Bucky’s metallic arm, the rise and fall of his tiny chest the only movement in the room. With his free hand, Bucky made an aborted movement towards Steve. Seemingly deciding better of it, he clenched his fist and dropped it with a soft thud on the table.

“Go get your partner, call in your reinforcements. We won’t be here when you come back.”

 

Steve did as he was told, and was sorry to see that Bucky proved to keep true to his word. They were gone when he led Sam back scant minutes later.

 

\---

 

Five days later, Bucky showed up on Steve’s doorstep. Steve had been weaving the latticetop on an apple pie he was baking as a ‘Congrats! It’s been a month since you last Hulked out’ present for Bruce when he heard a sequence of rapid, frenzied knocks on his door. It wasn’t abnormal for him to be disturbed late at night, but usually the thugs were less polite and just barged in through the window. Perplexed, Steve wiped his flour covered hands off on a dishtowel and walked over to open the door before thinking better of it and searching for something he could use as a weapon.

“Any day now, Steve!” called a strained yet familiar voice from the other side of his door. Perking up, Steve bounded over and swung it wide open. He relaxed immediately, drinking in the sight of Bucky (and his son) on the threshold of his home, all on their own accord. It took too long for him to tear his eyes away from Bucky’s face and see the reason for his unexpected visit. His dark clothes were shiny with blood and, although Les appeared to be uninjured, he had a shellshocked look on his small face and bloodstains from Bucky on his onesie.

Bucky handed the baby to Steve carefully enough, but as soon as his hands were free, he staggered through the doorway and promptly collapsed onto Steve’s couch. Pushing aside his dismay at probably having to get his couch reupholstered because of bloodstains again, Steve closed the door with a resolute click and padded over to sit down and ascertain the extent of Bucky’s injuries. He sat crosslegged, placed the wide-eyed Les in the crook of his legs, and prodded a spot of Bucky that wasn’t covered in blood.

“Hey,” he said experimentally.

Bucky’s steely gray eyes cracked open and surveyed him warily.

“Hey.”

Now that he knew Bucky was lucid, or at least near enough, Steve could give him another look. Bucky snorted and closed his eyes again with a wince. Apparently even snorting in derision was painful. Steve didn’t know whether to be thankful for that or not, and set about searching for the source of all the bleeding.

He kept his touch fleeting and featherlight, and still it seemed to pain Bucky. Several grimaces and hisses later, Steve was no closer to locating the source and Les had started to fidget. With a sigh, Steve hefted the baby to his chest and frowned down at him.

“We gotta get you to sleep. After that I’ll check up on your dad, okay?”

“That sounds peachy. Why don’t you just leave me here to bleed out while you go ahead and read him a bedtime story?” Bucky grumbled. Steve smiled guiltily and stood up.

“It’ll only take a moment. While I’m gone, you could try and take off your shirt, if it doesn’t hurt too much. I can do an okay patch-up job, but if you want anything fancier--”

“No!” Bucky interrupted, suddenly alert. He raised himself up on one elbow and looked imploringly at Steve. “Please, don’t tell anyone. Just let us stay here for one night before you go squealing to SHIELD,” beads of sweat appeared on his brow with the exertion of holding himself up, “You owe me that much at least, for forcing me to leave my apartment.”

And with that, he fell back on the couch with a huff and started trying to wiggle out of his soaking shirt. Steve didn’t let himself linger.

 

He’d been afraid Les wouldn’t be able to fall asleep on Steve’s rock-hard mattress, but his fears proved unfounded. As soon as the baby was tucked in, he began to snore softly. Steve looked around for something to use as a temporary replacement for the walls of a crib and settled with a shrug on tightly rolled t shirts. He’d keep the door open so he could watch Les from his living room. Even so, Steve tucked the sheets tighter around his tiny body.

 

By the time Steve returned, Bucky had managed to remove his gear and his shirt. With narrowed eyes, he watched Steve walk over and kneel next to him.

“I’m going to wash off some of the grime first so I can see what we’re dealing with.” Steve explained, showing Bucky the damp washcloth in his hand before he started using it to clean Bucky’s bloodied torso. Bucky was past hissing and grimacing and had moved onto removed interest. It appeared that the Soviet Super Soldier serum worked almost as quickly at mending and stitching wounds as the American did. Indeed, Bucky seemed more intrigued by the care with which Steve handled him than he was concerned for his own wellbeing. Having dirtied a whole washcloth and only finished half of the job, Steve sighed in frustration and threw the washcloth aside.

“You could help, you know.”

“What, and miss out on getting myself rubbed down by Captain America? I think I’ll pass.”

Steve sputtered and fell back on his behind. He could feel his face burning and knew a flush was undoubtedly blooming rosy red across his cheeks. Bucky was enjoying this, he decided. Although pale from the blood loss, his face glowed with restrained mirth.

“This isn’t getting rubbed down. It’s- it’s--”

“--Relax, Steve. I was joking,” Steve relaxed and almost laughed at himself before Bucky continued, “I know you’d never take advantage of me while I’m injured and disoriented. That’d be ungentlemanly.”

“Bucky, I swear to God…”

“Oh, I love it when you talk dirty. It makes me feel all tingly inside.”

Bucky was teasing him, pushing him to his limit to see what it would take until he snapped, but even he couldn’t know how much this pained Steve. He had still been coming to terms with the depth of feelings for Bucky when the Winter Soldier showed up out of the blue, wearing Bucky’s face and talking in Bucky’s voice.

“Bucky,” Steve’s voice cracked, “please.”

He didn’t dare finish his thought aloud. He didn’t even know what he had planned on saying. Bucky, please stop toying around with me like I’m nothing to you when you’re everything to me? Please, go ahead, keep saying those things while I just pretend you mean them?

Blessedly, Bucky understood enough to clamp his mouth shut while Steve went to fetch a towel and a bucket full of soapy water to finish the job. He remained silent as Steve hurriedly cleaned the rest of his torso, not commenting on how Steve’s hands clenched tight in anger as he cleaned the sensitive scarred skin at the juncture of Bucky’s shoulder and the metal arm. Although he must have noticed, he said nothing when Steve’s emotions got the better of him for an entirely different reason when he realized the only area he hadn’t yet cleaned was directly above the waistband of Bucky’s black pants. Rather than even try to go into that area, Steve sat back, basking in the sensation of a job well done.

“If I haven’t found it by this point, it’s probably already healed, right?”

Bucky hummed, indicating the affirmative. Steve found himself getting annoyed.

“Wait, how long has it been?”

Bucky looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling and he traced figures in the air.

“About half an hour, maybe an hour. No more than one and a half. Still, this was a fun experience, wasn’t it?”

“You motherfucking, shit soaked bastard,” Steve gasped. Not one of his proudest moments, but he’d had enough. He tossed the dirty towel at Bucky, ignoring his indignant ‘Hey!’ and walked away without a backward glance, “I’m going to check on your child, to make sure he hasn’t been fallen off the bed while you’ve been having fun.”

 

Les was soundly asleep, but Steve still found himself unwilling to leave the little tyke alone for too long, so he fetched an ancient quilt from his linen drawer and laid it down next to the bed. In his 90 years, he’d slept in considerably less comfortable conditions so he couldn’t complain. He settled in, blissfully unaware of what he’d never had to deal with back in the orphanage-- babies at night.

 

Sure enough, hours before the first rays of the sun had begun to lighten the sky, Steve was woken by Les’ needy howl. He leapt up, instinctively crouching into a defensive position before realizing how stupid he was. Steve moved to the edge of the bed and peered at the crying baby. Maybe he needed his diaper changed? Steve had an irrational hope that Agent 13 had diapers in her apartment because he sure as heck didn’t.

Cautious lest he handle Les incorrectly or somehow get diaper contents on himself, Steve picked Les up and held him out at arms’ length.

“Okay, Lessy, let’s go ask Miss Sharon if she has diapers and hope she doesn’t shoot us for waking her up in the middle of the night.”

“It’s called cloth diapers, bitch.”

Something soft hit Steve in the back of his head and he spun around to face his assailant. Bucky stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe with a handful of Steve’s best (and only) cloth napkins. He looked vaguely amused and not as tired as Steve felt. Les had stopped crying and was now giggling at being spun around at six feet above the ground.

Steve frowned.

“Don’t say the b-word in front of Les.”

Bucky let out a put upon sigh and came into the room, rolling off the doorframe in an undulating movement of his hips and torso that caught Steve’s eye. Steve noted that he was wearing exactly what he’d been wearing when Steve last saw him. That is to say, nothing but black cargo pants. Ever the opportunist assassin, Bucky’s gaze darted around the room, cataloguing the entirety and mentally marking down the exits. He halted a single stride from Steve, and extended his hands.

“Give me the baby, Steve.”

Steve gave him the baby without argument this time.

 

After Bucky had finished teaching Steve how best to convert napkins into diapers and had given Les a fresh change, they tucked him in together. Steve glanced upward and caught Bucky gazing at him. They looked at each other across the narrow expanse of Steve’s bed with a softly snoring baby in between them. And then they spoke all at once.

“Are you--?”

“If you wanted--.”

Awkwardly, they laughed, careful to keep quiet so they didn’t wake Les after all their efforts. Steve motioned for Bucky to speak. He shifted from foot to foot before saying,

“I was going to ask if you wanted to sleep on the couch. I’d like to be able to be here for Les, just in case.”

Steve understood that, and he had no doubt that Bucky would be able to sleep just as easily on the floor as him. All the same, he worried his lip, then smiled sheepishly as he remembered.

“The only problem is, I’m not all that fond of sleeping on blood covered couches.”

To his credit, Bucky looked as though he’d also just remembered the events of the night before. Unaccountably, he blushed. The rosy hue looked strange (but not entirely unattractive) on his stubble-covered face.

“I guess we could share the blanket,” he suggested quietly, then was quick to follow up with, “it’d be just like old times. Minus the couch cushions, of course.”

Steve agreed to join Bucky on the floor, but the venture turned out to be nothing like the old times. For one thing, Steve took up considerably more space. For another, Bucky had a metal arm. The worst part (and Steve had to remind himself several times it was the worst) was that the years of Soviet brainwashing and training hadn’t been enough to wipe him of his tendency to snuggle, so within minutes Bucky was curled up against Steve’s back. Despite his insistence that he’d be able to sleep, Steve’s eyes were wide open. He felt as though he’d crossed some important threshold, that Bucky sleeping openly in his presence was a sign that their old friendship could be salvaged. Perhaps it wasn’t too much to hope that they might become even closer. Perhaps…

“Hey, you awake?” the exhalation of warm air that accompanied his words ghosted across the nape of Steve’s neck. Steve shuddered involuntarily.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think our old positions work anymore.”

Steve rolled over to face Bucky. Surprised at his sudden movement, Bucky inhaled sharply. Though the tips of their noses were so close they were in danger of bumping into each other, Steve could only make out Bucky’s eyes in the complete darkness. They glinted like a wolf’s, and Steve felt uneasy, like he was prey, and Bucky was his predator.

“No. I’ve grown a bit.”

A flash of shining teeth in the darkness. Bucky was smiling.

“Understatement of the century,” he paused long enough for Steve to wonder if he’d fallen asleep for real, then said “We could switch places?”

Without waiting for Steve to reply, he shifted and maneuvered himself around until his bare back was pressed flush against Steve’s chest, the all too thin barrier of Steve’s shirt doing nothing to impede the heat radiating off Bucky’s serum-enhanced body and warming Steve to his core. Steve cleared his throat, uncomfortable, and Bucky ignored him, choosing instead to concentrate on arranging Steve’s arms around himself just so.

Paralyzed for fear of startling Bucky and making him grab Les and run away for good, Steve let himself be used as a human cocoon. He suddenly remembered a conversation he’d overheard between Tony and Pepper the other day about varying sizes of spoons as an analogy for sleeping in such a way. If he remembered correctly, that would make him the big spoon and Bucky the little spoon. He reminded himself not to say that aloud. He wasn’t sure Bucky would find it as laughable as Steve did.

The sound of Bucky’s breathing evening out and getting deeper brought him back to the present. Happier than he’d been for too long, Steve allowed himself to fall asleep, listening to the long-forgotten and unparalleled symphony of humanity in slumber.

 

Steve was surprised when he woke up with the pleasant feeling of someone in his arms. Even after he got over his initial surprise, he was puzzled. He’d been sure that Bucky would leave as Steve slept, maybe cleaning up all traces and make it look like he’d never stepped foot in Steve Rogers’ house, but here he was, breathing deeply and seemingly sound asleep, his face fully illuminated from the soft morning sun slanting in through Steve’s window.  As Steve marveled at his situation, Bucky’s hand released Steve’s-- somehow their hands had gotten tangled up in the night-- and pawed at his eye.

“Mornin’,” he sighed, somehow waking just moments after Steve.

Steve sighed in contentment, his breath ruffling Bucky’s matted hair, “Yeah. Mornin’.”

He didn’t want to move from that exact spot for the rest of the day, maybe even for the rest of eternity. They didn’t have pillows, or, for that matter, a mattress, and Bucky still smelled a little like blood and sweat despite his towel bath, but Steve felt like everything was right for once and he hoped that Bucky felt the same. He parted his lips in anticipation, working up the nerve to ask Bucky if he could stay just one night longer, when a piercing wail filled the air.

Les had awoken.

Bucky cursed and said something so incongruous that Steve was sure he’d misheard him (he seriously doubted a father would call his child a ‘cockblock’). While Bucky rose from the floor, bones creaking and metal clanking, Steve lay in fond observation a moment longer. Once it was clear that Bucky’s attention was fully on Les, Steve got up as well, and went into the kitchen to make breakfast.

Bucky came in just after he’d started the coffee and deposited a beaming Les on the countertop. He asked Steve if he minded Bucky using his shampoo and razor and, upon obtaining an answer in the negative, was off again. While Bucky showered, Steve looked through his pantry for something a baby might eat. He was pretty sure infants weren’t fond of muscle milk or protein flakes. Maybe he could blend up a spinach apple smoothie for Les?

Steve was saved from potentially turning Les off smoothies forever by Bucky’s return from the shower. He had been shoulder-deep in the fridge when he heard Bucky’s voice somewhere behind him.

“Before you freak out, I want you to know that this look is only temporary.”

Curious, Steve turned, and saw… Bucky. The real Bucky-- how he used to look before he was beaten to the ground, betrayed by the country he’d have died to protect, forgotten by his friends, and broken beyond recognition. Inexplicably, Steve felt like he was twenty years old again, lonely and afraid for the future, holding a spare change of pajamas at least two sizes too big, listening to Bucky excitedly go on about the features of their new apartment while he towelled his dark hair dry (‘We’ve even got our own bath, Steve. Hot water and all!’).

“You…” Steve swallowed around the lump in his throat, “You look nice, Buck.”

Distracted, Bucky nodded and carefully ran the back of his hand across his freshly-shaved jaw. With his hair pushed out of his eyes (and ignoring the various scars and premature lines), he could’ve been Bucky at twenty years old. It was enough to make Steve shiver. Actually, that was probably the open fridge blasting cool air at his back. Steve quickly closed it while Bucky was still to preoccupied to notice Steve’s apparent inability to function in Bucky’s presence. Bucky’s eyes fell on Steve and he smiled apologetically.

“I also borrowed some of your clothes. Sorry. Forgot to ask.”

It was true. Steve hadn’t noticed, but Bucky was wearing a pair of Steve’s workout sweats and a white tee with a picture of Cap’s shield on it. They were both a bit big-- the pants sagged and one of Bucky’s shoulders was partially exposed, but the hardened assassin looked softer than Steve had ever seen him. Steve beamed.

“Oh, that’s fine,” his heart was racing, but he had to ask before he lost his courage. He tried for nonchalance, and failed completely. “Hey, you and Les could hide out here for a while-- as long as you want, really. I think this would be the last place HYDRA would look for you, I mean...”

Steve trailed off. In a fraction of a second, Bucky was gone and the Winter Soldier was in his place. His stance shifted, his eyes narrowed, and he grabbed a still-drowsy Les tight to his chest. Les looked from Steve to Bucky, and his chin started to tremble.

“I let my guard down for one moment, and you go and call SHIELD on me.” Bucky growled, his voice rough and sinful. It wasn’t a question, but the smallest bit of doubt bled through. Steve heard that, and latched onto it.

“I didn’t. You know I didn’t. You can trust me. Think back to what you told me six days ago, and allow me to help you just this once, in repayment for all the times you helped me,” Steve then sighed and shrugged his shoulders, “You’ll always be my highest priority, Buck, not them, ‘cause I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”

He’d said it all matter-of-factly. He wasn’t trying to convince Bucky of anything except the truth. They stood staring at each other, separated by just a few feet of linoleum in Steve’s cozy kitchen, in an odd standoff of sorts. Steve blinked while Bucky glared. Les started to cry, and Bucky as he’d been before was back, hushing Les in soft tones and bobbing him up and down on his hip. In the end, the concerned father with a crying child won out against the distrusting Soviet.

“Fine, we’ll stay,” Steve’s heart soared, “... but only until I find some other place to stay. I’m not saying I trust you, Steve. All I know is that my baby cries when we fight, and I don’t like it when my baby cries.”

And Steve’s heart kept right on soaring. He proffered his hands, and tried to keep his smile down to normal levels of brightness. He didn’t want to look insane, after all.

“Here, let me.”

Reluctantly, Bucky handed Les over to Steve. Instantly, Les’ wails got quieter. He hiccuped, looking up in wonder at Steve. As an incredulous and more than a little miffed Bucky looked on, Les stopped crying altogether and raised a chubby hand with a single extended finger to poke Steve’s cheek. And then, Les giggled.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Bucky murmured, his voice equal parts impressed and offended. Steve sent him another look, but Bucky only shook his head in annoyance.

“Bucky, would you stop swearing and get breakfast started?”

“Sir, yes sir.”

‘Attacker being a smartass’ was on the list, so Steve knew exactly how to handle the situation. He playfully punched Bucky’s shoulder and ignored his whimpered ‘ow’ in favor of tickling Les’ pudgy belly.


End file.
